Tunnel

A tunnel is an underground passageway, completely enclosed except for openings for ingress and egress, commonly at each end.

A tunnel may be for foot or vehicular road traffic, for rail traffic, or for a canal. Some tunnels are aqueducts to supply water for consumption or for hydroelectric stations or are sewers. Other uses include routing power or telecommunication cables, some are to permit wildlife such as European badgers to cross highways. Secret tunnels have given entrance to or escape from an area, such as the Cu Chi Tunnels or the smuggling tunnels in the Gaza Strip which connect it to Egypt. Some tunnels are not for transport at all but rather, are fortifications, for example Mittelwerk and Cheyenne Mountain.

In the United Kingdom, a pedestrian tunnel or other underpass beneath a road is called a underpass subway. In the United States that term now means an underground rapid transit system.

The central part of a rapid transit network is usually built in tunnels. Rail station platforms may be connected by pedestrian tunnels or by foot bridges.

Contents

Usage limitations

A tunnel is relatively long and narrow; in general the length is more (usually much more) than twice the diameter. Some hold a tunnel to be at least 0.160 kilometres (0.10 mi) long and call shorter passageways by such terms as an "underpass" or a "chute". For example, the underpass beneath Yahata Station in Kitakyushu, Japan is 0.130 km long (0.081 mi) and so might not be considered a tunnel.

Geotechnical investigation

A tunnel project must start with a comprehensive investigation of ground conditions by collecting samples from boreholes and by other geophysical techniques. An informed choice can then be made of machinery and methods for excavation and ground support, which will reduce the risk of encountering unforeseen ground conditions. In planning the route the horizontal and vertical alignments will make use of the best ground and water conditions.

In some cases conventional desk and site studies yield insufficient information to assess such factors as the blocky nature of rocks, the exact location of fault zones, or the stand-up times of softer ground. This may be a particular concern in large diameter tunnels. To give more information a pilot tunnel, or drift, may be driven ahead of the main drive. This smaller diameter tunnel will be easier to support should unexpected conditions be met, and will be incorporated in the final tunnel. Alternatively, horizontal boreholes may sometimes be drilled ahead of the advancing tunnel face.

Construction

Tunnels are dug in types of materials varying from soft clay to hard rock. The method of tunnel construction depends on such factors as the ground conditions, the ground water conditions, the length and diameter of the tunnel drive, the depth of the tunnel, the logistics of supporting the tunnel excavation, the final use and shape of the tunnel and appropriate risk management.

There are three basic types of tunnel construction in common use:

Cut-and-cover

Cut-and-cover is a simple method of construction for shallow tunnels where a trench is excavated and roofed over with an overhead support system strong enough to carry the load of what is to be built above the tunnel. Two basic forms of cut-and-cover tunnelling are available:

Shallow tunnels are often of the cut-and-cover type (if under water, of the immersed-tube type), while deep tunnels are excavated, often using a tunnelling shield. For intermediate levels, both methods are possible.

Large cut-and-cover boxes are often used for underground metro stations, such as Canary Wharf tube station in London. This construction form generally has two levels, which allows economical arrangements for ticket hall, station platforms, passenger access and emergency egress, ventilation and smoke control, staff rooms, and equipment rooms. The interior of Canary Wharf station has been likened to an underground cathedral, owing to the sheer size of the excavation. This contrasts with most traditional stations on London Underground, where bored tunnels were used for stations and passenger access.

Open building pit

An open building pit consists of a horizontal and a vertical boundary that keeps groundwater and soil out of the pit. There are several potential alternatives and combination's for (horizontal and vertical) building pit boundaries. The most important difference with Cut-and-cover is that the open building pit is muted after tunnel construction, no roof is placed.

Clay-kicking

Clay-kicking is a specialised method developed in the United Kingdom, of manually digging tunnels in strong clay-based soil structures. Unlike previous manual methods of using mattocks which relied on the soil structure to be hard, clay-kicking was relatively silent and hence did not harm soft clay based structures.

The clay-kicker lies on a plank at a 45-degree angle away from the working face, and inserts a tool with a cup-like rounded end with his feet. Turning the tool with his hands, he extracts a section of soil, which is then placed on the waste extract.

Regularly used in Victorian civil engineering, the methods found favour in the renewal of the United Kingdom's then ancient sewerage systems, by not having to remove all property or infrastructure to create an effective small tunnel system. During the First World War, the system was successfully deployed by the Royal Engineer tunnelling companies to deploy large military mines beneath enemy German Empire lines. The method was virtually silent not susceptible to listening methods of detection.[1]

Boring machines

Tunnel boring machines (TBMs) and associated back-up systems are used to highly automate the entire tunneling process, reducing tunneling costs.

Tunnel boring in certain predominantly urban applications, is viewed as quick and cost effective alternative to laying surface rails and roads. Expensive compulsory purchase of buildings and land with potentially lengthy planning inquiries is eliminated.

There are a variety of TBMs that can operate in a variety of conditions, from hard rock to soft water-bearing ground. Some types of TBMs, bentonite slurry and earth-pressure balance machines, have pressurised compartments at the front end, allowing them to be used in difficult conditions below the water table. This pressurizes the ground ahead of the TBM cutter head to balance the water pressure. The operators work in normal air pressure behind the pressurised compartment, but may occasionally have to enter that compartment to renew or repair the cutters. This requires special precautions, such as local ground treatment or halting the TBM at a position free from water. Despite these difficulties, TBMs are now preferred to the older method of tunneling in compressed air, with an air lock/decompression chamber some way back from the TBM, which required operators to work in high pressure and go through decompression procedures at the end of their shifts, much like divers.

In February 2010, Aker Wirth delivered a TBM to Switzerland, for the expansion of Linth Limmern Power Plant in Switzerland. The borehole has a diameter of 8.03 metres (26.3 ft).[2] The TBM used for digging the 57-kilometre (35 mi) Gotthard Base Tunnel, in Switzerland, has a diameter of about 9 metres (30 ft). A larger TBM was built to bore the Green Heart Tunnel (Dutch: Tunnel Groene Hart) as part of the HSL-Zuid in the Netherlands, with a diameter of 14.87 metres (48.8 ft).[3] This in turn was superseded by the Madrid M30 ringroad, Spain, and the Chong Ming tunnels in Shanghai, China. All of these machines were built at least partly by Herrenknecht.

Shafts

A shaft is sometimes necessary for a tunnel project. They are usually circular and go straight down until they reach the level at which the tunnel is going to be built. A shaft normally has concrete walls and is built to be permanent. Once they are built, Tunnel Boring Machines are lowered to the bottom and excavation can start. Shafts are the main entrance in and out of the tunnel until the project is completed. Sometimes if a tunnel is going to be long, multiple shafts at various locations will be bored so that entrance into the tunnel is closer to the unexcavated area.[4]

Other key factors

Sprayed concrete techniques

The New Austrian Tunneling Method (NATM) was developed in the 1960s, and is the best known of a number of engineering solutions that use calculated and empirical real-time measurements to provide optimised safe support to the tunnel lining. The main idea of this method is to use the geological stress of the surrounding rock mass to stabilize the tunnel itself, by allowing a measured relaxation and stress reassignment into the surrounding rock to prevent full loads becoming imposed on the introduced support measures. Based on geotechnical measurements, an optimal cross section is computed. The excavation is immediately protected by a layer of sprayed concrete, commonly referred to as shotcrete, after excavation. Other support measures could include steel arches, rockbolts and mesh. Technological developments in sprayed concrete technology have resulted in steel and polypropylene fibres being added to the concrete mix to improve lining strength. This creates a natural load-bearing ring, which minimizes the rock's deformation.

By special monitoring the NATM method is very flexible, even at surprising changes of the geomechanical rock consistency during the tunneling work. The measured rock properties lead to appropriate tools for tunnel strengthening. In the last decades also soft ground excavations up to 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) became usual.

Pipe jacking

Pipe Jacking, also known as pipejacking or pipe-jacking, is a method of tunnel construction where hydraulic jacks are used to push specially made pipes through the ground behind a tunnel boring machine or shield. This technique is commonly used to create tunnels under existing structures, such as roads or railways. Tunnels constructed by pipe jacking are normally small diameter tunnels with a maximum size of around 2.4m.

Box jacking

Box jacking is similar to pipe jacking, but instead of jacking tubes, a box shaped tunnel is used. Jacked boxes can be a much larger span than a pipe jack with the span of some box jacks in excess of 20m. A cutting head is normally used at the front of the box being jacked and excavation is normally by excavator from within the box.

Underwater tunnels

There are also several approaches to underwater tunnels, the two most common being bored tunnels or immersed tubes. Submerged floating tunnels are a novel approach under consideration, however no such tunnels have been constructed to date.

Other

Other tunneling methods include:

Costs and cost overruns of tunnels

Tunnels are costly and generally more costly than bridges. Large cost overruns are common in tunnel construction.[7] [8]

Choice of tunnels vs. bridges

For water crossings, a tunnel is generally more costly to construct than a bridge. Navigational considerations may limit the use of high bridges or drawbridge spans intersecting with shipping channels, necessitating a tunnel.

Bridges usually require a larger footprint on each shore than tunnels. There are actually more codes to follow with bridges than with tunnels. In areas with expensive real estate, such as Manhattan and urban Hong Kong, this is a strong factor in tunnels' favor. Boston's Big Dig project replaced elevated roadways with a tunnel system to increase traffic capacity, hide traffic, reclaim land, redecorate, and reunite the city with the waterfront.

The 1934 Queensway Road Tunnel under the River Mersey at Liverpool, was chosen over a massively high bridge for defence reasons. It was feared aircraft could destroy a bridge in times of war. Maintenance costs of a massive bridge to allow the world's largest ships navigate under was considered higher than a tunnel. Similar conclusions were met for the 1971 Kingsway Tunnel under the River Mersey.

Examples of water-crossing tunnels built instead of bridges include the Holland Tunnel and Lincoln Tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan in New York City, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel between Manhattan and the borough of Queens on Long Island, and the Elizabeth River tunnels between Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia, the 1934 River Mersey road Queensway Tunnel and the Western Scheldt Tunnel, Zeeland, Netherlands.

Other reasons for choosing a tunnel instead of a bridge include avoiding difficulties with tides, weather and shipping during construction (as in the 51.5-kilometre or 32.0-mile Channel Tunnel), aesthetic reasons (preserving the above-ground view, landscape, and scenery), and also for weight capacity reasons (it may be more feasible to build a tunnel than a sufficiently strong bridge).

Some water crossings are a mixture of bridges and tunnels, such as the Denmark to Sweden link and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in the eastern United States.

There are particular hazards with tunnels, especially from vehicle fires when combustion gases can asphyxiate users, as happened at the Gotthard Road Tunnel in Switzerland in 2001. One of the worst railway disasters ever, the Balvano train disaster, was caused by a train stalling in the Armi tunnel in Italy in 1944, killing 426 passengers.

Variant tunnel types

Double-deck tunnel

Some tunnels are double-deck, for example the two major segments of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge (completed in 1936) are linked by a double-deck tunnel, the largest diameter bore tunnel in the world.[9] At construction this was a combination bidirectional rail and truck pathway on the lower deck with automobiles above, now converted to one-way road vehicle traffic on each deck.

The Lion Rock Tunnel, built in the mid-1960s connecting New Kowloon and Sha Tin within the territory of Hong Kong, carries a motorway and an aqueduct.

A recent double-decker tunnel with both decks for motor vehicles is the Fuxing Road Tunnel in Shanghai, China. Cars travel on the two-lane upper deck and heavier vehicles on the single-lane lower.

Multipurpose tunnel are tunnels that have more than one purpose. The SMART Tunnel in Malaysia is the first multipurpose tunnel in the world, as it is used both to control traffic and flood in Kuala Lumpur.

Artificial tunnels

Over-bridges can sometimes be built by covering a road or river or railway with brick or steel arches, and then leveling the surface with earth. In railway parlance, a surface-level track which has been built or covered over is normally called a covered way.

Snow sheds are a kind of artificial tunnel built to protect a railway from avalanches of snow. Similarly the Stanwell Park, New South Wales steel tunnel, on the South Coast railway line, protects the line from rockfalls.

Common utility ducts are human-made tunnels created to carry two or more utility lines underground. Through co-location of different utilities in one tunnel, organizations are able to reduce the costs of building and maintaining utilities.

Hazards

Owing to the enclosed space of a tunnel, fires can have very serious effects on users. The main dangers are gas and smoke production, with low concentrations of carbon monoxide being highly toxic. Fires killed 11 people in the Gotthard tunnel fire of 2001 for example, all of the victims succumbing to smoke and gas inhalation. Over 400 passengers died in the Balvano train disaster in Italy in 1944, when the locomotive halted in a long tunnel. Carbon monoxide poisoning was the main cause of the horrifying death rate.

Examples of tunnels

In history

See also the rapid transit history.

Longest

Notable

Other uses

Excavation techniques, as well as the construction of underground bunkers and other habitable areas, are often associated with military use during armed conflict, or civilian responses to threat of attack. The use of tunnels for mining is called drift mining. One of the strangest uses of a tunnel was for the storage of chemical weapons[11][12] [4].

Natural tunnels

Temporary way

During construction of a tunnel it is often convenient to install a temporary railway particularly to remove spoil. This temporary railway is often narrow gauge so that it can be double track, which facilitates the operation of empty and loaded trains at the same time. The temporary way is replaced by the permanent way at completion, thus explaining the term Perway.

Enlargement

The vehicles using a tunnel can outgrow it, requiring replacement or enlargement. The original single line Gib Tunnel near Mittagong was replaced with a double line tunnel, with the original tunnel used for growing mushrooms. The Rhyndaston Tunnel was enlarged using a borrowed Tunnel Boring Machine so as to be able to take ISO containers.

The 1836 Lime Street two track 1 mile tunnel from Edge Hill to Lime Street in Liverpool was totally removed, apart from a short 50 metre section at Edge Hill. Four tracks were required. The tunnel was converted into a very deep 4 track open cutting. However, short larger 4 track tunnels were left in some parts of the run. Train services were not interrupted as the work progressed. Photos of the work in progress: [5] [6] There are other occurrences of tunnels being replaced by open cuts, for example, the Auburn Tunnel.

Floor Lowering

Tunnels can also be enlarged by lowering the floor.

Accidents

See also

Notes

Bibliography

Further reading

External links